Wish I Were Here
by Panache
Summary: You can be a thousand miles away from someone and they're still with you every second of every day.  There are two words for that: love and hate. :: Dexter and Lumen try to figure out how to go on.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This took a long time for me to get right. While this is intended to primarily be Lumen's story, it didn't fall into place, until I started doing things from both Dexter's perspective as well as Lumen's. Dexter is obviously a terribly difficult character to write, so I would appreciate any feedback you have on that point. Over all I anticipate the whole story will be about four parts.

* * *

Lumen goes back home.

Not immediately. No she delays for weeks. Traipses across the Midwest in a lazy zig-zag that seemingly lacks rhyme or reason.

Buys a good pair of boots and hikes back-country trails in eastern Kentucky.

Goes to visit Graceland and winds up discovering instead she has a taste for bourbon but none for the Blues.

Drives a hundred miles out of her way to get sick on four different slices of pie.

Stays three days in Branson, Missouri.

(She doesn't really have an explanation for that).

Except she does, actually. Only it doesn't hit her until she's standing ankle deep in the headwaters of the Mississippi—what she's doing, what she's been doing for the past few weeks . . .

She's reliving her life, trying to reconstruct Lumen Pierce moment by moment, memory by memory.

It isn't working.

Absently she watches as the water rushes past her, pulled inexorably forward by something (gravity she supposes). It will never be this beautiful again. It will get polluted, get bigger, get faster and harsher until it's unrecognizable—until it's dirty and powerful and dangerous. And inexplicably magnificent.

But it will never be like this again.

_Okay_. She thinks. Let's go of a breath she didn't realize she was holding. _Okay._

**00**

Two weeks after she leaves, Dexter gets a postcard in the mail—"Hello from the Bluegrass State."

It's blank on the back.

He fingers the postmark and logs in to run a check on the Criminal Activity and Missing Persons reports for the surrounding area with tightness in his chest that is unfamiliar.

(If he could have asked someone they would have called it hope).

**00**

She goes through five postcards in Kentucky. There are a hundred things she wants to say—_Thank you. I'm sorry. I miss you. Wish you were here. Wish I was there_—only they all feel cruel, feel like a promise she can't keep, a claim she doesn't have the right to make.

But she keeps writing them anyway, over and over until she finally has to face the fact she can't lie to him, even by omission.

It doesn't stop her from trying all over again when she reaches Memphis.

**00**

He keeps the postcards (six in all) tucked in the bottom of the trunk next to her knife. Clean and neat and compartmentalized. Right where she belongs.

Only he starts to think about Christine Hill, about Trinity. About her fingerprints on the paper. About guilt by association and how easily everything can unravel.

Dexter burns them in the sink and washes the ashes down the drain.

It's harder than it should be.

Two days later another one shows up in his mailbox—"Greetings from Minneapolis."

**00**

Lumen goes home because it's what's next.

Because she isn't going to get any better, any less damaged. And she could keep running, could delay a little more, but that's too much like stasis, like being stuck.

Going home at least feels like doing something.

Her mother's at the door before Lumen gets out of the car, before she's even made the decision to get out of the car. She's sitting there at the end of the long drive in the spot she knows from long practice is concealed from the kitchen window, hand still on the ignition key, and she's about three seconds away from pulling back out when suddenly there Margret Pierce is, silhouetted in the doorway, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, driven there by some sixth sense all mothers seem to possess when it comes to their children.

And the decision is made for her. There's no recognition in her mother's face, nothing to indicate she's pieced together what the strange car sitting at the end of her driveway means, and yet . . . Lumen can't shake the feeling that's she's done this before, with every unfamiliar motor, every rustle of leaves or bark of a dog her mother has stood in that doorway and hoped.

She opens the car door and gets out.

For a moment nothing happens, her mother just stands there rooted, blank, and Lumen can't move either.

Maybe . . . maybe her mother doesn't recognize her, _can't_ recognize her, maybe what she's been through (_what she's done_) has changed her too much, chipped and carved and hewn at the core of her until she is someone all together different, someone new and separate from the little girl Margret Pierce raised.

Suddenly her mother lets out a strange, strangled sound that's half way between a scream and a sob, and stumbles forward, keeps stumbling until she's running (_actually running_) towards her across the lawn.

Lumen knows she should meet her halfway, understands the premise of reunion with a kind of intellectual detachment. Like an actor whose read the scene, remembers the blocking but can't connect with the emotion.

She doesn't move, doesn't do anything.

_This is wrong. I'm wrong._ It flashes through her mind a second too late, and then her mother's arms are wrapped around her, enveloping and suffocating and heart-wrenchingly missed.

And the next thing she knows she's holding on to her mom for dear life, clutching her close and crying, repeating over and over. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

She keeps saying the words apologizing to everyone and no one—to Owen, to Dexter, to the girl who died in that cabin so that she could live. To this woman holding her, who thinks she's got her daughter back.

"I'm _so_ sorry."

"It's okay. You're home now. Everything will be okay."

Lumen wishes she believed that.

**00**

Astor doesn't say anything about the postcard that's stuck in the middle of the otherwise blank freezer door, but he can feel her eyes settle on it briefly before flicking away to survey the apartment he is belatedly realizing will be far too small for the four of them.

These were the kinds of details Rita always took care of.

There's an long awkward pause he doesn't know how to fill.

All their excitement about being here, their joy at the prospect of spending the summer together. He can feel it all leaking away, slipping through his fingers and he doesn't have the first clue how to stop it.

_Don't leave_. He wants to say. _I can get this right._ He wants to promise. But the words stick in his throat (he's said them before and Lumen left all the same).

Astor just gives him a small determined smile, "It'll be like a sleepover. Won't it Cody?"

It is, of course, nothing like a sleepover (or at least he assumes its not because why would anyone ever want to do that?)

The next day he moves them into his bedroom and takes the couch. Starts trolling Craigslist for belated summer rentals.

Deb rolls her eyes, when he confesses the problem. "I swear to God, Dex. How are you this big of a fuckwad?"

He could tell her, but it would ruin the moment.

Still two days later Quinn stops him in the parking lot and hands him the phone number for a realtor. "Just tell him you're a friend. He'll hook you up."

He's good enough at faking emotion to know his attempt at a smile is more of a grimace, but Quinn determinedly ignores that and grins back like they're best buds.

Dexter doesn't know whether Quinn is still thanking him for Liddy or has moved on to trying to suck up to his girlfriend's brother.

Either way he hopes it stops soon.

When the realtor actually comes through with a two bedroom rental four blocks walk from the beach, and he's forced to have Deb and Quinn over for a barbeque ("Because that's how normal people say thank you, asshole. And make sure you have beer.") it just solidifies his desire to introduce Quinn to his knives.

He never thought he'd miss Lundy.

But the kids love it and Astor surprises him by taking the postcard off of the freezer and adding to the pile of things they're bringing over from the apartment with a small tight smile he can't translate.

"It's okay. Sometimes I still miss my dad."

He doesn't understand. Astor hated Paul. It had always been Cody who forgave too easily, too generously. But this feels important, delicate in a way he's bound to break, and all he says is, "He was your dad."

Astor shrugs. "She's your friend."

Dexter stares down at the postcard and tries to absorb the present tense.

Somewhere out there Lumen is getting up, is drinking coffee, and going for a run. Living the life he gave her.

He wants to take it back.

Instead he asks, "Do you want to invite Olivia to come down for a few days?"

And this time Astor's smile is easy to read.


	2. Chapter 2

The problem with getting a Master's Degree in Art History, Lumen realizes, is you are spectacularly unqualified for anything that really matters.

Six months ago she would have argued, articulately, passionately, that this mattered. That nothing mattered more than the preservation of who we are as a people through an understanding of how we've viewed ourselves over time.

She was so incredibly full of shit.

So here she is, just another over-educated barista.

Sadly, in this economy . . . she fits right in.

The thing is? She likes it, in a way. There's something soothing about the superficiality. Interacting with the world from behind an espresso machine, practicing all the appropriate emotional responses, but not really having to worry too much about messing up. Like an introductory course back into the society.

Humanity 101.

Her parents don't understand, of course. She'd had a position with the MIA. They'd even held it for her. She'd had a future, a career, a star that could have shined _so _bright all there, just waiting for her when she came back from Miami. Her readymade life that she'd worked so hard to create. And she'd just walked away.

How could they understand? She's taken every precaution, made every effort to ensure they never will. So her mother hides her worry behind tenderness; her father masks his disappointment with silence.

And life . . .

Just.

Goes.

On.

And Lumen watches it happen from the other side of the counter.

She's sleepwalking through this . . . whatever it is. This shadowplay of a life. And nothing seems quite real, like she's viewing it all from the other side of the veil. Intangible flickers of light and dark shaping something she can't quite manage to grasp.

When she'd told Dexter she didn't feel the need anymore, that all consuming, ever persistent hunger that never let up or let go, she hadn't been lying. She hadn't been lying and she had been so _relieved_ that it was gone, that finally (_finally_) she could think of something other than how Chase would look on their table, how his blood would feel on her hands, the taste of his last breath on her tongue.

But at least she'd felt something.

Now. Now there's nothing. Just nothing.

She calls the double shot latte and tries to laugh off the young man's attempts to flirt, but he's too persistent and she's too tired.

Lumen doesn't know what he sees in her smile, in her eyes, but from the way he abruptly stops flirting . . . she can guess.

And she discovers she was wrong. She can feel something.

It feels better than it should.

**00**

Dexter dreams about killing her.

About having her laid out on his table, beautifully immobile.

He takes his time with the room, getting it just right, an homage to their time together; holds his breath when she finally wakes up, her eyes darting from corner to corner. Until finally, he can't take it anymore, "Well, what do you think?"

Lumen smiles. "It's perfect."

He talks to her in his dreams. The way he does with all his victims in those few moments before death. But the conversations are all wrong, normal and domestic—about Harrison, about Quinn, about the department's latest case, about the newest addition to his slide collection.

She listens, laughing at his stories, offering advice for his problems, telling him her own, kitchen table conversation at its most macabre. Until finally as if by some predetermined schedule, they both know its time.

He lets her see the knives, make the choice.

She never fails to pick the right one.

"I miss you."

He wakes up on the downward swing, breathing hard, hands twisted in the sheets, keeps his eyes closed just a moment longer trying to recapture the feeling of having her so near.

But it's useless.

It always is.

Nine times now, and he still doesn't know what her blood looks like on the plastic.

Somewhere on the other side of the door Cody turns on cartoons and Harrison starts crying.

Absently, he reaches out to touch the empty left side of the bed where Rita slept.

It's cold.

**00**

"What happened to you?"

At the sound of her father's voice, Lumen stops trimming the roast mid-stroke and lets out a shaky breath. Just the question is enough to bring everything flooding back, vivid and brutal, and she can smell them on her skin, taste them in her mouth, feel them inside her violating her over and over.

She nearly screams.

"Lumen?"

The knife bites hard into the cutting board, and but she doesn't let go, keeps her hand fisted tight around it, white-knuckling the handle, and she's gasping, hyperventilating, scrambling for air she can't get fast enough.

Somewhere in the distance, in the far corners of her mind she can hear Dexter's voice.

_They're dead._

She closes her eyes and watches Dexter snap Dan the Dentist's neck.

_We killed them._

She shuts out her father's voice and hears the silence as Dexter shoves the rag back into Cole's mouth.

_You killed them._

She breathes in and smells Alex's fear as he tries to bargain for his life.

_You're safe._

She feels Jordan's body slip between from her hands into the ocean, and let's go of the knife.

It takes her a moment to realize her father is still standing there, patient and stalwart and unmoving, waiting for her to respond to a question she can't answer, that she's angry with him for asking.

"Nothing happened. I'm fine." But the words come out harsh and brittle and so obviously not fine, that she keeps talking, attempting to construct a lie out of scraps of truth. "I'm just . . . I'm realizing that all the things I thought I wanted. The person I was. I don't . . . I can't . . ." She stumbles, tripping over inadequate explanations, until what comes out is one strangled word.

"Daddy."

It's a curse as much as plea. _Why weren't you there?_ She wants to scream. _They raped me. They raped me and where were you? Where _were_ you?_ But he doesn't hear that part, just hears the small, hurt little girl that needs to be held.

"Oh tiger, come here," he whispers, and at the nickname she's suddenly ten years old again faint from the pain of a broken arm and trying desperately not cry in front of him, trying to be brave. "Be whoever you want to be. Just be happy. You came back so sad. I just want you to be happy."

Lumen's not sure she remembers how.

**00**

Later that night she comes out to stand on the back porch, watching as he plays fetch with Einstein. (So named because he's the dumbest dog in the entire world.) It's been a long time since they've done this, but it's an old familiar ritual, and for a little while they both just let it happen, pretending there isn't an unfinished conversation hanging between them.

She wants to tell him everything. Her father has always been her champion, the one with the biggest dreams, the highest expectations, the one who believed in her more than she ever believed in herself. But for every hurt, every disappointment she's ever suffered, Charles Pierce has felt it twice over.

Lumen still isn't sure she survived what she went through. It might kill him.

But she wants to give him something, some sliver of truth, and what she comes up with surprises her.

"I fell in love."

He stops mid-throw, but doesn't turn.

"While I was gone. I fell in love with someone."

"Is this someone the reason you didn't go round the world with Owen?"

She'd been wondering about that. Whether they knew that Owen had found her, that she'd turned him down. But of course they did. Owen was that type of guy—marry her, run away with her—he'd ask permission either way.

"He was part of it."

Her father doesn't say anything for a very long time, just keeps tossing the ball, and they both watch as Einstein goes digging around her mother's flower beds in the entirely wrong spot.

"Mom's going to have your head." Lumen offers the setup like an olive branch and he throws back the punch-line like they did this routine yesterday not months ago.

"I'll tell her you did it."

It's not an apology. It doesn't erase the harsh words before she left or the months that happened in between, but it's something and for the first time Lumen doesn't feel like a stranger in her parent's house.

She turns to go back inside.

"Was he a good man?"

Lumen thinks of plastic sheeting, of blood slides tucked in her jewelry box. Of bone saws and hefty bags and the look on his face when she killed Alex. And she thinks of Harrison, of Astor, of Dexter's hands over hers and leather gloves tucked in pink tissue paper. Of being chased through swampland and rescued from a cabin. Of the man curled up on a kitchen floor wishing for something she couldn't trust herself to give.

"He was to me."

If her father notices it's not quite an answer, he doesn't say anything.

**00**


	3. Chapter 3

"You're not thinking this through." Harry warns from his spot over on the couch.

Dexter doesn't look up from the notes he's making on the blue print. "I am. I have thought everything through. The grandparents are in town. Deb and Quinn are out of town. Everyone busy. Nobody looking for Dexter. Alone at last."

"Then why are you planning for two?"

That makes him pause, blink, and now he sees it—the kill he's been working on, the setup, the ambush . . . it's a two person job. A team effort. Only he doesn't have a playmate.

"Fuck." The papers go flying, scattering around his apartment in a tornado of frustration and he fists his hands on the desk.

Harry bats one away with a frown of disappointment. "She's not coming back."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Knowing something and accepting it are two different things."

"Not for me."

His foster father's silence on the subject is deafening.

It's true though. Facts, evidence, these are the building blocks of his world. Things are what they are. The truth may be hidden, may be complex, but once found, he's never been one to question, to live in denial. Even with Rita . . .

He's read up on the process of loss, has gone through message board after message board of internet support groups, looking for guidance on how he's supposed to do this, what it's supposed to look like. In the end he does it wrong anyway, knows the correct action and still inexplicably chooses the wrong ones. (_It doesn't occur to him that maybe that's grief_). No matter how varied the stories, there's always a common thread of subconscious denial, post after post about that moment just after waking when you forget, when you expect the other person to be there.

That never happens for him, he knows there's no one else to get Harrison if he cries at two a.m., knows when he reaches out in the morning her side of the bed will be cold. (_He still does It, though, thinks maybe he owes it to Rita to forget, just once._)

He doesn't understand what's happening to him now.

"She's a loose end. You've never had that before."

"No. You've never let me. Dexter stands alone."

Harry drops his gaze to the mess of papers with a pointed look. "And this is the reason. Connections are messy. Messy gets you caught. _She _almost got you caught."

"She would have learned." The protest feels weak, ineffectual.

"But she didn't want to."

No, she didn't. And suddenly he's choking with rage. She didn't want him because of his dark passenger, so why doesn't his dark passenger want to do this without her?

"She didn't want us," he whispers.

"It's not her fault." Harry's voice is now sympathetic, consoling, "No one can be expected to live with the reality of what you are. I couldn't."

Dexter grimaces, clenches his hands tighter, "Lumen did. She saw me, and she didn't turn away."

But she did. She did, and he knows it.

So this is what denial feels like . . .

Harry shakes his head. "She was broken. Like you are, like you'll always be. Did you really think you could keep her once she was fixed?"

"You said you thought I could have been different. That maybe you were wrong. That maybe I didn't have to be this."

"But you are. And if you weren't . . ."

"Lumen would be dead."

Lumen would be dead, and Rita would be alive. And he probably wouldn't have dated her, wouldn't have Harrison. He can wish and dream and unravel his life in a million different ways, but none of it makes any difference. He is what he is, and there are other monsters out there waiting to meet him.

And tonight's the night.

He picks the blue-prints back up and begins to plan anew—a clean, precise one person strike that he can already see will be far more elegant.

"It's better this way." He murmurs absently. "Much, much better."

**00**

It's late July, when the package comes in the mail. There's no return address, but the Miami-Dade postmark tells her all she needs to know.

Her father hands it to her with a look that says he noticed the post-mark, too. Gently shushes her mother when she asks "Aren't you going to open it?"

"She's twenty eight years old, Margaret. Let her have a little privacy."

Lumen gives him a tight half-smile, and tucks it beside her on the couch, letting it rest against her thigh like a secret.

Later that night when all is still and quiet she peels the padded envelope open, tips its contents out on to the bed.

The gleaming pearl handle of her knife is stark against the dark comforter and for moment she just stares at it. Trying to decipher what it means.

No note. No explanation. No careful pink tissue paper wrapping.

Just her knife dropped in a priority mail-envelope like an afterthought.

And maybe it's because he wants her to have something to remember him by.

But she can't help thinking it feels more like he's getting rid of her.

Three days later she breaks a cup at work, cuts her fingertips on the pieces, and for a second she's transfixed by the sight of blood on glass, reaches out to smear a bead of it along the crystal clear surface of the largest piece and watch in morbid fascination as it dries.

"You okay?"

She manages to pocket the fragment as she turns to smile up at her co-worker. "Yeah, I just . . . didn't realize I'd cut myself. Sorry."

That night she lines the jagged piece up on the window sill next to her blood slides and stares at the dark stains in the moonlight. Her blood looks just like the others.

If she'd been a slide, if she'd been a trophy, Dexter would have had to keep her.

**00**

August comes and the kids return to Orlando for the start of school.

He and Harrison move back into the apartment.

Everything back to normal.

The daily search of Minneapolis Criminal Activity Reports greets him when he gets into work. But this time he pauses before clicking on it. It's been three months and nothing. He's not even sure what he's looking for.

Loose threads.

Messy connections.

Dexter deletes the report without opening it and turns off the automatic search. If he experiences a flicker of something like loss at the action, well it's brief and quickly shed.

He's always been a very neat monster.

**00**

Lumen's not quite sure what she's doing here. She's passed by this place a dozen times and never noticed it. But now she has, and she can't bring herself to walk away.

The occupants barely look up as she enters the 'Woman's Crisis Center' that looks like its run on nothing more than a shoestring budget and female determination. And she wonders how many times a day someone darkens their doorstep only to leave at the first sign of too much interest or not enough.

Finally after some predetermined interval a small, practically-dressed woman comes over and offers her a cup of tea. "I'm Valerie."

Lumen stares down at the proffered mug and says the first thing that comes to her mind. "I don't need help."

Which somehow, within these walls, roughly translates to 'I need so much help I don't even know where to begin.'

Valerie pulls back the tea and takes a sip as if that had been her intention all along. The silence is stifling, and Lumen wonders how many times this woman has used it to get people to talk.

She should leave now. This place is dangerous. This place is unnecessary. Extraneous. She's not a victim. She's not in crisis.

She's not a victim any more.

She's not.

Valerie keeps looking at her, too patient, too knowing. She's been here for three minutes and has already given too much of herself away. She should go.

"I was hoping to volunteer. I have a job, and I might be going back to school, but I can come by in the mornings or at night. Your website says you run twenty-four hours." They keep looking at her. "I don't sleep much," she adds lamely at the end in an unintended outpouring of honesty.

And she can tell they all know it's not quite the whole truth, but they're willing to give her the lie.

Shoestrings and feminine determination aren't so generous they can afford to turn down the offer of free labor.

Eventually Valerie stops mentioning the group sessions she's leading. Anna stops trying to get her to train as a crisis counselor for the hotlines (She knows she's not qualified to counsel anyone).

Instead Lumen discovers a talent for the tedium of paperwork and finances. It's small and unshowy and nothing that will ever result in the kinds of thank you notes the others get.

But no one notices if you don't have the right emotional reactions to expense reports.

Across the office a red-haired teenager comes in, heroin thin with a fading black eye, a healing split lip and skittishness she knows all too well. Valerie goes over with the tea and Lumen watches as the girl breaks down in a sobbing mess of pain and fear and rage that no amount of group therapy (_no amount of blood_) is ever going to entirely take away.

She puts in the earbuds of her iPod and goes back to her spreadsheets. Pretends she doesn't know what's happening. Pretends she doesn't constantly think about what she could do to the people who make this place necessary. To the man who did that.

_I told you it would change you._

She was already changed.

She was.


End file.
